selfportrait — Blog — Santa Classics

Tea parties were a real thing back in the day. Starting with Victorians, the afternoon tea was a daily event in any respectable well-off family. The fashion quickly spread all over Europe, and reached the US, during its Gilded Age (the period from the 1870s to about 1900). Here affluent families used teas as debutante parties.

Mary Cassatt was a great admirer of Edgar Degas. Both artists had a long period of collaboration. Cassatt said: "How well I remember seeing for the first-time Degas' pastels in the window of a picture dealer. I would flatten my nose against the window and absorb all I could of his art." Degas would help Cassatt get models for her work. Here one of those models was the woman sitting with Cassatt’s sister Lydia.

Inspired by Paul Gaugin - Tahitian Women on the Beach

Born in Peru, he emigrated to France, and secured a job as a stockbroker in Paris. He did quite well as a broker. By the age of 31 he was pulling down 30,000 Francs a year, the equivalent of about $150,000 today. At the age of 35 he gave it all up to be a painter. This new job was not a success, so in 1891 he left his wife and five children and headed for Tahiti. He stayed there for ten years, returning once to try to sell his work and raise capital to return. His life in Tahiti was tempestuous. He married three times, all teenage island girls (13 and 14). This was considered a marriageable age in the Tahitian culture, but in western culture it is considered pedophilia. Gaugin was not the only French colonist that took advantage of the Tahitians desire for status or financial gain. These weddings were not legally binding and all three of his wives eventually left him. Gaugin used his wives for the models in countless paintings. The model for both of the women in this painting is Teha’amana, his first Tahitian muse, lover and eventually wife.

In 1901 when he became seriously ill with syphilis and in trouble with the French authorities, he left town. Alone and impoverished, Gauguin died of a stroke in the Marquesas Islands on May 8, 1903. He has been championed and reviled by art history. His painting was magnificent, but his lifestyle seems unacceptable.

If you would like to see the original painting: bit.ly/43HIFQS

Mary Stevenson Cassatt - The Tea

Tahitian Women on the Beach - Paul Gaugin